Missing Boy Feared Dead, Warrant Reveals

Search warrants from Teller County show North Carolina detectives suspect a reputed polygamist shot a missing 6-year-old boy and stuffed the child's body in a suitcase.

The warrants state an informant told investigators that an adult woman was also murdered at a home on Pear Tree Lane in Durham last month.

KRDO first reported the story as a missing person case this weekend. Police were searching for 25-year-old Vania Rae Sisk and her 6-year-old son, Jadon Higganbothan.

Sisk was part of a home-based church group known as the Black Hebrews living at a home in Durham.

In an interview with WTVD-TV earlier this week, Jadon's father, Jamiel Higganbothan, said his son and ex-wife had unusual living arrangements.

"It was a lot people staying in the house," he said. "It was her, it was the kids, it was his sister, her kids."

The warrants obtained by KRDO say that North Carolina detectives contacted Colorado authorities in February after the church group -- along with Sisk and three of her four children -- moved there. Durham authorities wanted to know Sisk's whereabouts and wanted to establish the well-being of Jadon.

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"Peter Moses had grabbed a gun and began pacing angrily around the house. The informant heard Peter Moses call for the 5-year-old boy ? to the basement and then heard loud music and the sound of a gunshot"

Warrant

Teller County sheriff's deputies found the adults along with 10 children ranging in age from infants to 8-year-olds in the Cripple Creek area. The children were placed in protective custody with the Teller County Department of Social Services. A judge then placed the juveniles in the custody of Durham Social Services.

The warrants also outline why North Carolina detectives suspect something happened to Jadon. They state investigators got information from a confidential informant who is a former member of the group "who got away." The informant told them Moses got extremely angry with the 6-year-old in October 2010.

"Peter Moses had grabbed a gun and began pacing angrily around the house. The informant heard Peter Moses call for the 5-year-old boy to the basement and then heard loud music and the sound of a gunshot," one warrant said.

The informant later saw the boy's body wrapped in plastic, stuffed in a suitcase, and placed in the attic of the home.

"The informant told investigators that several days later the body began to stink and Peter Moses was asked to remove the body, which he did," according to the warrant.

The warrants said Moses gave a gun to two female housemates who previously beat Antoinetta McKoy, 28, after he became angry about misplaced car keys. According to the warrants, Moses told one woman -- Jadon's mother, Vania Sisk -- to shoot McKoy.

"Which Vania Sisk did," the warrant said.

Moses then helped the women remove McKoy's body from the home and bury it.

The search warrants say Colorado authorities were looking for a 9 mm handgun and a .22-caliber weapon.

McKoy's sister told WTVD-TV in North Carolina she hasn't heard from her younger sister since early December -- when McKoy returned to her apartment in Washington, D.C. with her boyfriend, Peter Moses, to pick up some belongings, telling her family she was going to be in Durham with Moses for a while.

"She had gave us a hug and said that she loved us and that she would be calling us soon because she's coming back," McKoy's sister, Janayia Dubose, said. "We're still concerned about whether she's alive or dead and this is not like my sister, so it's, like, really devastating to my family."

Dubose said her sister had known Moses since high school and McKoy reconnected with him on Facebook last year. She said they began a long-distance relationship in which McKoy would travel frequently to Durham and says that one of her visits in August turned violent.

"She's saying that he smacked her in the mouth with the gun and he shot at her three times," Dubose said.

After the assault, Dubose said she noticed a change in her sister, but said McKoy stayed in the relationship and was visiting Moses in Durham when she disappeared.

"I became concerned when I noticed two days had passed and she didn't put any minutes on her phone," Dubose said.

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